Natty smiled ruefully, feeling his pain. Even for someone such as Natty, whose mind was forever more in the future than it was in the present, this was all a bit much to swallow. Imagine what Leon must be going through. His specialty was the real world; for him and special ops guys like him, it couldn’t get any more real.
“We talked, Leon, about the Singularity—an age of runaway technology, of accelerated evolution, the likes of which the human mind just can’t fathom—and all the things that could trigger it; it could have been anything really, or any combination of things. As early as the second decade of the twenty-first century, Google was working away on its Deep Mind project and it was also the early days of quantum computing. The perfection of either of those technologies, far less the two together, could easily have been enough to trigger the Singularity. The Chinese, hell, anyone with any smarts at all, were working on getting their AI to supersentience status before anyone else because once there, it could evolve in seconds to places that took humans eons to evolve to. And within minutes could be so far beyond us in evolutionary terms that we had more in common with ants than it had with us.
“And those were just a few of the many doors opening onto a Singularity-driven future. Minds upgraded with mindchips or nanococktails could just have easily driven the same reaction, albeit from more of a grass-roots level. It’s just a matter of time, I suspect, before both those evolutionary trajectories intersect, and we have both a top-down solution, say a supersentient AI from an organization like Google, and a bottom-up solution, one derived from interlinking all those mind-chip-upgraded humans.”
“Yes, maybe by 2050 or so, if you’re uber-optimistic,” Leon said. “Shit, Natty, it’s barely 2030. How the hell did you play beat the clock on this one?”
Natty sighed. He’d touched on these talking points before with Leon at the end of their last adventure, but he could see how that conversation might well be playing like a nightmare in Leon’s head that never really happened. Such was the nature of denial. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross had outlined the method of dealing with the loss of a loved one rather well; sooner or later he’d die out of the old self, shed in a succession of seven clearly defined stages, and he’d be more solidly in the here and now, able to embrace the new reality. But until then… Natty suspected this conversation may yet take a few more reiterations to be fully absorbed.
Natty inhaled sharply knowing he’d need the deep breath to power him through the next chapter in this lecture. “Leon, my father was the Tesla of his times. He had the good sense to procure me by mating with my mother, who was every bit his equal. And then they genetically enhanced me further in utero. But they didn’t stop there; in effect, they cloned me, made as many copies as they needed to man as many versions of this ship that exists throughout countless timelines. My father was not one for taking half-measures.
“He knew that the singularity was dawning on earth; he just didn’t know if we’d survive it. That kind of empowerment coming upon a society before it was ready—it could well destroy it; as might the powers that be who couldn’t stand transitioning from an era of overly-concentrated power in the hands of too few to a more egalitarian distribution of empowerment.
“Father really didn’t believe we’d make it out of an Age of Scarcity and into an Age of Abundance—where a combination of AI supersentiences and nanotech could make all our dreams come true, could eliminate all human need, and empower us to scatter across the heavens virtually overnight on an upswell of mind power that grew exponentially from one second to the next.”
Natty took another breath; it seemed he could never get this lecture out in its entirely on just one deep breath. Maybe this time he could at least do it in two. “So he built this craft—well out of range of any oversight. He used his oligarch standing, his multi-billionaire mogul status as head of a number of the most progressive tech companies in the world to capitalize on an idea that came ironically enough from James Cameron, the movie director. Cameron came up with a design for a probe that could penetrate Europa’s icy surface, to explore its subsurface ocean. Needless to say, my father improved on the idea, and the first of the Truman probes went forth into the solar system, earmarked for Europa. Loaded aboard were self-replicating, self-modifying robots whose genetic algorithms could be matured with each stage, borrowing on what he’d learned from stem cell research and how an inseminated human egg differentiated by stages into a complete adult human being. Once the Nautilus had grown to maturity from this “egg,” he subsequently engineered the Nautilus’s supersentience. And once it started evolving… Well, all bets were off. Everything else that followed to get us to where we’re at today is mind blowing by our standards, a positive yawn by the standards of the Nautilus’s supersentience.”
Leon took another long pull on that beer mug and gasped. “So what you’re saying is that we took the least likely road to Singularity State, not the most likely one?”
“The most likely ones were up against no less steep odds, for reasons I’ve already outlined, and honestly, he didn’t have the time to fight his way past the opposition he’d encounter on Earth to acting on his ideas.”
“I wonder how much of this is him, how much is the supersentience, and how much owes to the many clones of you that are now out there,” Leon said, eying the ship behind him in the reflection off the glass before him, instead of looking beyond it at the stars.
“My father was just the one behind the curtain setting the stage, Leon. What ultimately gets enacted under the spotlights will be a drama in which we all have a crucial part. Neither my father nor I could ever afford to work with a sloppy mind. You won’t find a single redundancy aboard the Nautilus; each one of you is vital to our success.”
“And what happens when we die off? And rest assured, many of us won’t make it.” Leon voiced his concerns with the ennui of a practiced cynic grown hard perhaps on living for too long where grandiose ideas met hardened reality.
“Then the Nautilus will reconstitute us. None of us can truly die so long as she continues. Each of us has already been backed up to her memory banks.”
Leon chortled but the laugh got stuck in his throat and came out more like a grunt. “If you’re trying to set my mind at ease—”
“It’ll take time, Leon, for all of us, to adjust to this new reality. Don’t force it. Our here and now is still much like a flower that has yet to open; so much so that we can’t yet learn about ourselves and our true potential at this stage of the bloom.”
Leon gazed into Natty’s eyes. There was something not quite right. “You’ve given plenty of rationalizations for why we’re out here. But I know you, Natty. All you said… Well, it’s good cover, damn good cover, and they might be reasons enough for your innumerable clones, but what about you? What’s the real Natty doing out here?”
Natty looked taken back, as if he were ashamed he hadn’t asked himself this question. “I suppose to answer Cory Doctorow’s challenge. He said that the Singularity Wave that would catch us up was nothing more than a progressive apocalypse, not unfolding all at once, just a little bit at a time. I guess I need to know if he’s right.”
Leon finished his drink, slammed the mug down on the counter. “For the record, the view was meant to be more mind-blowing than you.” He hiked off in a huff.
Natty could tell Leon was genuinely mad at him. He supposed that was a natural reaction. Techa only knows, he got the same reaction from the wife more often than not, and now, well, Natty was married to Leon, too, if only in a manner of speaking. So it should hardly take him by surprise when he tended to generate the same reactions in Leon. On the plus side, maybe it was safe for Natty to conclude he wasn’t as objectionable as all that; it was just the nature of the worlds he opened them all up to that took a little getting used to.
SIX
ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
Leon lay in his bed in his private chambers and tossed and turned. The images going through his mind were less than settling.
The sk
y was leaden. The entire planet was mired in a fog of despair. That sense of sorrow condensed into the gun-metal greys of the warriors on the battlefield. The enemy was of an ancient species, of this Leon had no doubt; they reminded him far too much of fetuses in the womb—the early stages they go through before displaying more humanity—when they still looked more reptile than human.
And those God-awful screeches the alien combatants emitted, to paralyze their victims with fear, couldn’t sound any more primeval if they tried.
They scampered across the battlefield like mutated lizards subject to polluted rivers and streams for far too long; no two the same, some missed legs, some missed just an arm or a leg, some missed their tails.
The ones with tails—they were the deadliest. One paralyzed a cadet with an ear-piercing scream as it flicked its tail at another of Patent’s Alpha Unit teens. The scream was a sonic weapon that split open the skull of the one it was directed at, allowing the ancient alien warrior species exemplar to feast on the brains without further ado. And the tail that sliced its victim in half with just one lash was more often wielded with such precision that the head was instantly severed and in such a way that it rolled toward the enemy warrior. That way, as soon as it finished slurping up the brains of the one it had immobilized with the scream, it could start in on the brains of the other.
God damn it! Leon seethed. Even Alpha Unit, which wasn’t nearly as trained or experienced as Omega Force, was supposed to be better than this. A lot better. They were in many ways more adaptable. They came with far better toys to fight with—far more progressive tech than Omega Force wielded; the older warriors opted for the tried and true versus the untested. And the younger ones had more pliable minds; they’d grown up playing shoot-em-up video games no less gory than what was going on out here, and no less alien-infested. Those two factors alone went far to balance the scales.
But today wasn’t their day. They were just too outnumbered. And the kids, exhausted, after putting down so many of the enemy, weren’t used to riding out the tidal surges of hormones in their brains. Gone was the “runners high” of pure adrenaline and its accompanying feel-good hormones, replaced now with the kind of neurochemicals that promoted psychosis. And if anything, this alien race looked tailor made for someone experiencing a psychotic break.
Patent should have pulled his people back already, to give them time to regroup. So why hadn’t he?
One of the transgender Alpha Unit teens was stumbling around out there naked. The mud splattered over him not enough to hide his generous breast endowment or his engorged dick. Half drunk on his own hormones, he remained nonetheless fearless and emitted battle cries of his own as he fired his rocket-rifle, a multipurpose weapon that lobbed grenades from the under barrel when it wasn’t spitting out bullets from the barrel above. Each time he exploded the head of one of those roving reptiles he screamed back at them in defiance, making mockery of their acoustic weapons.
He was inspiring the other Alpha Unit cadets, giving them a second wind, allowing them to rise up off the ground on gusts of pure attitude alone. Good for them, Leon thought. But where the hell was Patent and why wasn’t he putting an end to this?
Leon couldn’t wait any longer for him to get his head out of his ass. He lunged forward out of the foxhole, but didn’t get far. The whipping tail of one of those bastards stabbed him through and through then lifted him up off the ground, within reach of the reptile’s small arms, which it then used to pry open his skull. Leon could feel his brain being feasted on. They said we didn’t have nerves beneath our skulls that allowed us to feel—they were wrong.
Leon lurched upwards in bed, panting, screaming—a most undignified scream for a special ops unit leader. His sheets were drenched so they were no good for wiping the last of the perspiration off him. He lumbered toward the bathroom of his cabin aboard the Nautilus and stared at himself in the mirror as he used the towel to dab the sweat off his face. “Damn it, Natty.” Why did you have to go and put the idea in my head that the bad guys are coming because we’re only now far enough up the food chain to interest them? Eating the brains of your enemy— Didn’t the Native Americans used to do something similar, to absorb their enemy’s strength, and as a show of respect? Just don’t tell me I’m caught up in a low budget straight-to-DVD installment of the Predator series, which now that it’s at number five or so, can’t solicit decent enough actors to warrant a bigger budget. He threw down the towel and slogged back to the bedroom.
There was a liquor cabinet of sorts stacked with bottles with different labels against the wall. A good thing he elected to read the labels. They were all nano-potions, designed to re-task whatever nanites he had floating about inside him, or more likely, temporarily recruit a group of them to augment a specific undertaking. Leon decided “brain tonic nanites” beat the hell out of straight liquor right now anyway. The last thing he needed was more delirium tremens; he had enough of those already, and he hadn’t earned them.
He poured a shot glass and slammed the concoction down his throat. It tasted like battery acid, or like really good whiskey, not that he could ever afford the latter. Natty was the multi-billionaire with the cool toys that he just let the poor kids play with.
Leon needed to think through this proposition of Natty’s that the nanites had downloaded to his brain when his defenses were down, in dream state, that those star gates they were getting ready to play hopscotch across the universe with were indeed meant to prepare them, step by step, to face even bigger adversaries—including the be-all-end-all of enemies at the other end of the farthest star gate—the one that was coming for them on Earth.
The nanite potion was kicking in.
Ironically, the more lucid he felt, the worse the nightmares got. Natty’s proposition was a terrifying one that just so happened to make a lot more sense to his now far more agile mind.
There was one person aboard this ship that could help unravel the mystery of what was really going on with the star gates.
Solo.
They’d met him in the Amazon—their fiercest enemy turned staunchest ally—after inflicting no shortage of pain on the battlefield to all those in the engagement, including the aboriginals.
He was a sentient serpent that walked upright and had shed his tail, unlike many of his genetically altered brethren, belonging to other castes, which had not. He was the smartest of the lot, their natural leader, who had abandoned his leadership duties, handing them off to his protégé so he could follow Leon across the stars.
Solo was quite psychic. And he’d never come entirely clean as to his reason for following Leon out here. Maybe it was time to get a bit more of the story out of him.
Leon didn’t even bother dressing when exiting his cabin. His skivvies would have to do. He’d gotten quite used to fighting scantily clothed in the Amazon; like the natives, he’d learned that less was more in the tropics. Besides, Solo didn’t employ clothing, just kept his dick strapped to his right leg like a police baton to keep it from flopping around on him; it looked every bit as scaly and as weaponized as the rest of him. You’d think that would be eye-catching enough, but no, it was the rainbow eyes that kept you riveted. They saw into eternity, and the various bands of the rainbow shifted over one another as he adjusted focus. They said some people looked smart. Natty looked smart, but not in the way that Solo did.
The only time Leon had ever seen Solo fight was to mix it up with an interdimensional being who he alone could reach. Leon would have appreciated an explanation for that stunt, too, which he never got. Whatever secrets Solo was hiding, Leon was glad he was finally fighting on their side.
He found Solo in his private chambers aboard the Nautilus, walked there by Laney. It had taken this second time with her in the role of tour guide to realize she, too, was a hologram. It made sense, he supposed, that her hologram was harder to spot. She would have taken more time to personalize it and humanize it than Natty would have justified. But she was also the chief bioengineer aboard this
vessel, and the simple fact was she couldn’t afford them the time they deserved. He knew her well enough to know that the realization must have played hell with her, but if she was tasked with keeping Omega Force and Alpha Unit alive as soon as they were out of the protective womb of this ship, she might well have her hands full, being as they were coming up fast on the first star gate. The ship was capable of speeds comparable to the Star Trek Enterprise’s warp factor ten, which of course, the original model didn’t have. Leave it to Natty’s dad to make some improvements, even to an imaginary technology.
“I hope I get to see the real you soon,” Leon said to Laney as they reached the door so Solo’s cabin.
“Me too.” She smiled, trying to downplay the guilt she felt that was plastered across her face, gave him a big hug and a playful peck on the lips, and dematerialized.
Leon stepped through the sliding doors. The swooshing sound they made closing behind him was punctuated by the final click, like the drop of a guillotine’s blade as it smacked the wood holster.
Inside, Solo was floating upright in a Samadhi tank. The transparent walls of the tank showcased the super-oxygenated straw-colored liquid that allowed him to breathe easily underwater. Leon had taken advantage of such tanks himself for rejuvenation purposes; they hastened healing after an injury. He found them quite meditative, but they took some getting used to. Personally, the sensation of being returned to the womb was one Leon found quite mind-expanding. He wasn’t psychic in the way that Natty was, and certainly not in the way that Solo was, but inside those tanks, well, everyone was more in touch with the cosmos.
The Star Gate Page 5